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Jury Chosen for Shoah Memorial

The jury is in, though the verdict on what a proposed Holocaust memorial on the Atlantic City boardwalk will look like remains a good ways off.

Architect Daniel Libeskind and scholar Michael Berenbaum are among the individuals recently named to a jury that will decide the winner in an open design competition; the goal is to choose a concept for a piece of public art that best represents the memory of the Shoah.

The Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial Inc. announced the makeup of the jury at a Nov. 19 press conference; the competition will remain open until Jan. 15.

Other jury members include architect Richard Meier, who designed the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and James E. Young, a scholar and critic who has written widely on Holocaust memorials.

Libeskind is perhaps best known for his proposed plans for the World Trade Center site. He also designed the controversial Jewish Museum Berlin.

The competition is open to architects, landscape architects, city planners, sculptors, artists, designers and others, and can be done either in collaboration or individually. The jury is expected to choose six to 10 finalists and award a $2,500 stipend to allow the creation of three-dimensional models of these designs.

Back in March, following City Council approval, Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo T. Langford signed a resolution calling for the monument's creation. Then the city donated the land. The 60x60-foot site for the memorial is situated on the boardwalk between New York and Kentucky avenues.

The idea for the project came from Rabbi Gordon Geller, religious leader of Temple Emeth Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Margate, N.J.

Back in April, Geller said in an interview that the "ultimate purpose of this Holocaust memorial is to reach out to the multitudes -- 98 percent of whom are not Jewish -- and give a legacy message of 'Never Again' and common humanity."